The Giger-inspired horror-FPS Scorn has been around long enough that it was actually a candidate on Steam Greenlight, Valve's long-defunct approval process for potential Steam releases. At the time, its first of two parts was expected to arrive in 2017, but that didn't happen: In September of that year, a successful $223,000 Kickstarter campaign promised a 2018 release, but that also failed to materialize.
It surfaced again in May 2020 with an exceedingly moist trailer that was heavy on atmosphere and not much else (including a new release target) but a fall 2021 launch was set during an appearance earlier this year at Gamescom. Sadly, that has fallen through, and developer Ebb Software now says it will arrive sometime in 2022.
"Development hell is a term that is thrown around quite often. It should be used on projects that changed their core idea or scope mid-dev and can't adjust to," the studio wrote in a Kickstarter update. "That doesn't apply to our products for the most part. In our case, a lot of mistakes were made and will make more in the future, but it's a normal process for a new, inexperienced team."
"Everything that was done up until the middle of 2018 has been reworked, 90% of it completely scrapped. It's about making it what we want it to be, not releasing it just because we gave some arbitrary release date. If it's not ready, it's not ready. Why would people want to play something that the developers think it's still not up to par?"
The delay announcement ended on a somewhat combative note—"If lack of communication is so bothersome just ask for a refund and be done with it"—which studio CEO Ljubomir Peklar apologized for the next day.
"I quickly and haphazardly read through the draft of the update and in all my wisdom approved it. Reading through again it was clear that the hostile tone it was written in should not be how we should express ideas or plans to people that help us out," Peklar wrote. "We may be tired, confused and frustrated at our own ineptitude, but there is no reason to lash out at you. For that I personally apologise. I will do my best for this kind of outburst not to happen again."
Another update addressing concerns about the game and the delay is expected to be posted later today. And here's a look at some Scorn gameplay from October 2020. It's definitely weird.
